WINDOWS 



y ELIA W. 
PEATTIE 



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PAINTED WINDOWS 

ELIA W. PEATTIE 



PAINTED WINDOWS 

BY 
ELIA W. PEATTIE 




NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



PAINTED WINDOWS 

BY 
ELIA W. PEATTIE 




NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



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Cofyrighl, 1918, 
By George H. Doran Company 



Copyright, .1912, 
By Perry Mqson Company 

Copyright, 1913, 
By The McCall Company 

Printed in the United States of America 

« 

OCT 10 Ibid 

©CI.A.50«124 



Will you come with me into the chamber of memory 
and lift your eyes to the painted windows where the figures 
and scenes of childhood appear? Perhaps by looking with 
kindly eyes at those from out my past, long wished-for 
visions of your own youth will appear to heal the wounds 
from which you suffer, and to quiet your stormy and 
restless heart. 



CONTENTS 

CB^PTEB PAGB 

I NIGHT 13 

II SOLITUDE 30 

III FRIENDSHIP 49 

IV FAME 68 

V REMORSE 85 

VI TRAVEL lOS 



PAINTED WINDOWS 



PAINTED WINDOWS 



NIGHT 

YOUNG people believe very little 
that they hear about the compen- 
sations of growing old, and of living 
over again in memory the events of the 
past. Yet there really are these com- 
pensations and pleasures, and although 
they are not so vivid and breathless as 
the pleasures of youth, they have some- 
thing delicate and fine about them that 
must be experienced to be appreciated. 
Few of us would exchange our mem- 
ories for those of others. They have 
become a part of our personality, and 

13 



14 PAINTED WINDOWS 

we could not part with them without 
losing something of ourselves. Neither 
would we part with our own particular 
childhood, which, however difficult it 
may have been at times, seems to each 
of us more significant than the child- 
hood of any one else. I can run over 
in my mind certain incidents of my 
childhood as if they were chapters in a 
much-loved book, and when I am wake- 
ful at night, or bored by a long journey, 
or waiting for some one in the railway- 
station, I take them out and go over 
them again. 

Nor is my book of memories without 
its illustrations. I can see little vil- 
lages, and a great city, and forests and 
planted fields, and familiar faces; and 
all have this advantage: they are not 
fixed and without motion, like the pic- 
tures in the ordinary book. People 
are walking up the streets of the vil- 
lage, the trees are tossing, the tall 



NIGHT 15 



wheat and com in the fields salute me. 
I can smell the odour of the gathered 
hay, and the faces in my dream-book 
smile at me. 

Of all of these memories I like best 
the one in the pine forest. 

I was at that age when children think 
of their parents as being all-powerful. 
I could hardly have imagined any cir- 
cumstances, however adverse, that my 
father could not have met with his 
strength and wisdom and skill. All chil- 
dren have such a period of hero-wor- 
ship, I suppose, when their father 
stands out from the rest of the world 
as the best and most powerful man 
living. So, feeling as I did, I was made 
happier than I can say when my father 
decided, because I was looking pale and 
had a poor appetite, to take me out of 
school for a while, and carry me with 
him on a driving trip. We lived in 
Michigan, where there were, in the days 



16 PAINTED WINDOWS 

of which I am writing, not many rail- 
roads; and when my father, who was 
ittorney for a number of wholesale mer- 
cantile firms in Detroit, used to go 
about the country collecting money due, 
adjusting claims, and so on, he had no 
choice but to drive. 

And over what roads! Now it was 
a strip of corduroy, now a piece of well- 
graded elevation with clay subsoil and 
gravel surface, now a neglected stretch 
full of dangerous holes; and worst of 
all, running through the great forests, 
long pieces of road from which the 
stumps had been only partly extracted, 
and where the sunlight barely pene- 
trated. Here the soaked earth became 
little less than a quagmire. 

But father was too well used to hard 
journeys to fear them, and I felt that, 
in going with him, I was safe from all 
possible harm. The journey had all the 
allurement of an adventure, for we 



\ 



NIGHT 17 



would not know from day to day where 
we should eat our meals or sleep at 
night. So, to provide against trouble, 
we carried father's old red-and-blue- 
checked army blankets, a bag of feed 
for Sheridan, the horse, plenty of bread, 
bacon, jam, coffee and prepared cream ; 
and we hung pails of pure water and 
buttermilk from the rear of our buggy. 
We had been out two weeks without 
failing once to eat at a proper table or 
to sleep in a comfortable bed. Some- 
times we put up at the stark-looking ho- 
tels that loomed, raw and uninviting, 
in the larger towns ; sometimes we had 
the pleasure of being welcomed at a 
little inn, where the host showed us a 
personal hospitality; but oftener we 
were forced to make ourselves ** paying 
guests" at some house. "We cared noth- 
ing whether we slept in the spare rooms 
of a fine frame *' residence" or crept 
into bed beneath the eaves of the attic 



18 PAINTED WINDOWS 

in a log cabin. I had begun to feel that 
our journey would be almost too tame 
and comfortable, when one night some- 
thing really happened. 

Father lost his bearings. He was 
hoping to reach the town of Grat^'ot by 
nightfall, and he attempted to make a 
short cut. To do this he turned into 
a road that wound through a magnifi- 
cent forest, at first of oak and butter- 
nut, ironwood and beech, then of 
densely growing pines. When we en- 
tered the wood it was twilight, but no 
sooner were we well within the shadow 
of these sombre trees than we were 
plunged in darkness, and within half an 
hour this darkness deepened, so that 
we could see nothing — not even the 
horse. 

**The sun doesn't get in here the 
year round," said father, trying his 
best to guide the horse through the 
mire. So deep was the mud that it 



NIGHT 19 



seemed as if it literally sucked at the 
legs of the horse and the wheels of the 
buggy, and I began to wonder if we 
should really be swallowed, and to fear 
that we had met with a difficulty that 
even my father could not overcome. I 
can hardly make plain what a tragic 
thought that was ! The horse began to 
give out sighs and groans, and in the 
intervals of his struggles to get on, I 
could feel him trembling. There was 
a note of anxiety in father's voice as 
he called out, with all the authority and 
cheer he could command, to poor Sheri- 
dan. The wind was rising, and the long 
sobs of the pines made cold shivers run 
up my spine. My teeth chattered, 
partly from cold, but more from fright. 

"What are we going to do?" I asked, 
my voice quivering with tears. 

' ' Well, we aren 't going to cry, what- 
ever else we do!" answered father, 
rather sharply. He snatched the 



20 PAINTED WINDOWS 

lighted lantern from its place on the 
dashboard and leaped out into the road. 
I could hear him floundering round in 
that terrible mire and soothing the 
horse. The next thing I realised was 
that the horse was unhitched, that fa- 
ther had — for the first time during our 
journey — laid the lash across Sheri- 
dan's back, and that, with a leap of in- 
dignation, the horse had reached the 
firm ground of the roadside. Father 
called out to him to stand still, and a 
moment later I found myself being 
swung from the buggy into father's 
arms. He staggered along, plunging 
and almost falling, and presently I, too, 
stood beneath the giant pines. 

''One journey more," said father, 
* * for our supper, and then we '11 bivouac 
right here." 

Now that I was away from the buggy 
that was so familiar to me, and that 
seemed like a little movable piece of 



NIGHT 21 



home, I felt, as I had not felt before, 
the vastness of the solitude. Above me 
in the rising wind tossed the tops of the 
singing trees; about me stretched the 
soft blackness ; and beneath the dense, 
interlaced branches it was almost as 
calm and still as in a room. I could see 
that the clouds were breaking and the 
stars beginning to come out, and that 
comforted me a little. 

Father was keeping up a stream of 
cheerful talk. 

"Now, sir," he was saying to Sheri- 
dan, ** stand still while I get this har- 
ness off you. I'll tie you and blanket 
you, and you can lie or stand as you 
please. Here's your nose-bag, with 
some good supper in it, and if you don't 
have drink, it's not my fault. Anyway, 
it isn't so long since you got a good nip 
at the creek." 

I was watching by the faint light of 
the lantern, and noticing how unnat- 



22 PAINTED WINDOWS 

ural father and Sheridan looked. They 
seemed to be blocked out in a rude kind 
of way, like some wooden toys I had at 
home. 

''Here we are," said father, ''like 
Robinson Crusoes. It was hard luck 
for Robinson, not having his little girl 
along. He'd have had her to pick up 
sticks and twigs to make a fire, and that 
would have been a great help to him. ' ' 

Father began breaking fallen 
branches over his knee, and I groped 
round and filled my arms again and 
again with little fagots. So after a few 
minutes we had a fine fire crackling in 
a place where it could not catch the 
branches of the trees. Father had 
scraped the needles of the pines to- 
gether in such a way that a bare rim of 
earth was left all around the fire, so that 
it could not spread along the ground; 
and presently the coffee-pot was over 
the fire and bacon was sizzling in the 



NIGHT 2S 



frying-pan. The good, hearty odours 
came out to mingle with the delicious 
scent of the pines, and I, setting out 
our dishes, began to feel a happiness 
different from anything I had ever 
known. 

Pioneers and wanderers and soldiers 
have joys of their own — joys of which 
I had heard often enough, for there had 
been more stories told than read in our 
house. But now for the first time I 
knew what my grandmother and my 
uncles had meant when they told me 
about the way they had come into the 
wilderness, and about the great happi- 
ness and freedom of those first days. I, 
too, felt this freedom, and it seemed to 
me as if I never again wanted walls to 
close in on me. All my fear was gone, 
and I felt wild and glad. I could not 
believe that I was only a little girl. I 
felt taller even than my father. 

Father's mood was like mine in a 



24 PAINTED WINDOWS 

way. He had memories to add to his 
emotion, but then, on the other hand, 
he lacked the sense of discovery I had, 
for he had known often snch feelings 
as were coming to me for the first time. 
When he was a young man he had been 
a colporteur for the American Bible So- 
ciety among the Lake Superior Indians, 
and in that way had earned part of the 
money for his course at the University 
of Michigan; afterward he had gone 
with other gold-seekers to Pikers Peak, 
and had crossed the plains with oxen, 
in the company of many other adven- 
turers; then, when President Lincoln 
called for troops, he had returned to 
enlist with the Michigan men, and had 
served more than three years with Mc- 
Clellan and Grant. 

So, naturally, there was nothing he 
did not know about making himself 
comfortable in the open. He knew all 
the sorrow and all the joy of the home- 



NIGHT 25 



less man, and now, as he cooked, he be- 
gan to sing the old songs — "Marching 
Through Georgia, ' ' and * * Bury Me Not 
on the Lone Prairie," and ''In the 
Prison Cell I Sit." He had been in a 
Southern prison after the Battle of the 
Wilderness, and so he knew how to sing 
that song with particular feeling. 

I had heard war stories all my life, 
though usually father told such tales in 
a half -joking way, as if to make light of 
everything he had gone through. But 
now, as we ate there under the tossing 
pines, and the wild chorus in the tree- 
tops swelled like a rising sea, the spirit 
of the old days came over him. He was 
a good * ' stump speaker, ' ' and he knew 
how to make a story come to life, and 
never did all his simple natural gifts 
show themselves better than on this 
night, when he dwelt on his old cam- 
paigns. 

For the first time I was to look into 



26 PAINTED WINDOWS 

the heart of a kindly natured man, 
forced by terrible necessity to go 
through the dread experience of war. 
I gained an idea of the unspeakable 
homesickness of the man who leaves 
his family to an unimagined fate, and 
sacrifices years in the service of his 
country. I saw that the mere foregoing 
of roof and bed is an indescribable dis- 
tress ; I learned something of what the 
palpitant anxiety before a battle must 
be, and the quaking fear at the first 
rattle of bullets, and the half -mad rush 
of determination with which men force 
valour into their faltering hearts; I 
was made to know something of the 
blight of war — the horror of the battle- 
field, the waste of bounty, the ruin of 
homes. 

Then, rising above this, came stories 
of devotion, of brotherhood, of service 
on the long, desolate marches, of cour- 
age to the death of those who fought 



NIGHT 27 



for a cause. I began to see wherein 
lay the highest joy of the soldier, and 
of how little account he held himself, 
if the principle for which he fought 
could be preserved. I heard for the 
first time the wonderful words of Lin- 
coln at Gettysburg, and learned to re- 
peat a part of them. 

I was only eight, it is true, but emo- 
tion has no age, and I understood then 
as well as I ever could, what heroism 
and devotion and self-forgetfulness 
mean. I understood, too, the meaning 
of the words *'our country," and my 
heart warmed to it, as in the older times 
the hearts of boys and girls warmed 
to the name of their king. The new 
knowledge was so beautiful that I 
thought then, and I think now, that 
nothing could have served as so fit an 
accompaniment to it as the shouting of 
those pines. They sang like heroes, 
and in their swaying gave me fleeting 



28 PAINTED WINDOWS 

glimpses of the stars, unbelievably 
brilliant in tbe dusky purple sky, and 
half-obscured now and then by drifting 
clouds. 

By and by we lay down, not far apart, 
each rolled in an army blanket, frayed 
with service. Our feet were to the fire 
— for it was so that soldiers lay, my fa- 
ther said — and our heads rested on 
mounds of pine-needles. 

Sometimes in the night I felt my fa- 
ther's hand resting lightly on my shoul- 
ders to see that I was covered, but in 
my dreams he ceased to be my father 
and became my comrade, and I was a 
drummer boy, — I had seen the play, 
* ' The Drummer Boy of the Rappahan- 
nock," — marching forward, with set 
teeth, in the face of battle. 

"Whatever could redeem war and 
make it glorious seemed to flood my 
soul. All that was highest, all that was 
noble in that dreadful conflict came to 



NIGHT 29 



me in my sleep — to me, the child who 
had been born when my father was at 
*'the front." I had a strange baptism 
of the spirit. I discovered sorrow and 
courage, singing trees and stars. I was 
never again to think that the fireside 
and fireside thoughts made up the whole 
of life. 

My father lies with other soldiers by 
the Pacific; the forest sings no more; 
the old army blankets have disap- 
peared; the memories of the terrible 
war are fading, — ^happily fading, — ^but 
they all live again, sometimes, in my 
memory, and I am once more a child, 
with thoughts as proud and fierce and 
beautiful as Valkyries. 



II 

SOLITUDE 

AMONG the pictures that I see 
when I look back into the past, is 
the one where I, a sullen, egotistic per- 
son nine years old, stood quite alone in 
the world. To be sure, there were fa- 
ther and mother in the house, and there 
were the other children, and not one 
among them knew I was alone. The 
world certainly would not have re- 
garded me as friendless or orphaned. 
There was nothing in my mere appear- 
ance, as I started away to school in my 
clean ginghams, with my well-brushed 
hair, and embroidered school-bag, to 
lead any one to suppose that I was a 
castaway. Yet I was — I had discovered 

30 



SOLITUDE SI 



this fact, hidden though it might be 
from others. 

I was no longer loved. Father and 
mother loved the other children ; but not 
me. I might come home at night, fairly 
bursting with important news about 
what had happened in class or among 
nly friends, and try to relate my little 
histories. But did mother listen? Not 
at all. She would nod like a mandarin 
while I talked, or go on turning the 
leaves of her book, or writing her letter. 
What I said was of no importance to 
her. 

Father was even less interested. He 
frankly told me to keep still, and went 
on with the accounts in which he was 
so absurdly interested, or examined 
'* papers" — stupid-looking things done 
on legal cap, which he brought home 
with him from the office. No one kissed 
me when I started away in the morn- 
ing ; no one kissed me when I came home 



S2 PAINTED WINDOWS 

at night. I went to bed unkissed. I 
felt myself to be a lonely and misunder- 
stood child — ^perhaps even an adopted 
one. 

Why, I knew a little girl who, when 
she went up to her room at night, found 
the bedclothes turned back, and the 
shade drawn, and a screen placed so as 
to keep off drafts. And her mother 
brushed her hair twenty minutes by the 
clock each night, to make it glossy; and 
then she sat by her bed and sang softly 
till the girl fell asleep. 

I not only had to open my own bed, 
but the beds for the other children, and 
although I sometimes felt my mother's 
hand tucking in the bedclothes round 
me, she never stooped and kissed me on 
the brow and said, ''Bless you, my 
child." No one, in all my experience, 
had said, ' * Bless you, my child. ' ' When 
the girl I have spoken of came into the 
room, her mother reached out her arms 



SOLITUDE 38 



and said, before everybody, ''Here 
conies my dear little girl." When I 
came into a room, I was usually told to 
do something for somebody. It was 
''Please see if the fire needs more 
wood,'' or "Let the cat in, please," or 
"I'd like you to weed the pansy bed be- 
fore supper-time. ' ' 

In these circumstances, life hardly 
seemed worth living. I decided that I 
had made a mistake in choosing my 
family. It did not appreciate me, and 
it failed to make my young life glad. 
I knew my young life ought to be glad. 
And it was not. It was drab, as drab 
as Toot's old rain-coat. 

Toot was "our coloured boy." That 
is the way we described him. Father 
had brought him home from the war, 
and had sent him to school, and then 
apprenticed him to a miller. Toot did 
"chores" for his board and clothes, 
but was soon to be his o^fVTa man, and to 



S4 PAINTED WINDOWS 

be paid money by the miller, and to 
marry Tulula Darthula Jones, a nice 
coloured girl who lived with the Cut- 
lers. 

The time had been when Toot had 
been my self-appointed slave. Almost 
my first recollections were of his carry- 
ing me out to see the train pass, and 
saying, **Toot, toot!" in imitation of 
the locomotive; so, although he had 
rather a splendid name, I called him 
**Toot," and the whole town followed 
my example. Yes, the time had been 
when Toot saw me safe to school, and 
slipped little red apples into my pocket, 
and took me out while he milked the 
cow, and told me stories and sang me 
plantation songs. Now, when he passed, 
he only nodded. When I spoke to him 
about his not giving me any more ap- 
ples, he said: 

*'Ah reckon they're your pa's ap- 



SOLITUDE 35 



pies, missy. Wliy, fo' goodness' sake, 
don' yo' he'p yo'se'f?" 

But I did not want to help myself. 
I wanted to be helped — not because I 
was lazy, but because I wanted to be 
adored. I was really a sort of fairy 
princess, — misplaced, of course, in a 
stupid republic, — and I wanted life con- 
ducted on a fairy-princess basis. It was 
a game I wished to play, but it was one 
I could not play alone, and not a soul 
could I find who seemed inclined to play 
it with me. 

Well, things went from bad to worse. 
I decided that if mother no longer loved 
me, I would no longer tell her things. 
So I did not. I got a hundred in spell- 
ing for twelve days running, and did 
not tell her ! I broke Edna Grantham's 
mother's water-pitcher, and kept the 
fact a secret. The secret was, indeed, 
as sharp-edged as the pieces of the 
broken pitcher had been ; I cried under 



36 PAINTED WINDOWS 

the bedclotlies, thinking how sorry Mrs. 
Grantham had been, and that mother 
really ought to know. Only what was 
the use? I no longer looked to her to 
help me out of my troubles. 

I had no need now to have father and 
mother tell me to hurry up and finish 
my chatter, for I kept all that hap- 
pened to myself. I had a new * ' intimate 
friend," and did not so much as men- 
tion her. I wrote a poem and showed 
it to my teacher, but not to my unin- 
terested parents. And when I climbed 
the stairs at night to my room, I swelled 
with loneliness and anguish and resent- 
ment, and the hot tears came to my eyes 
as I heard father and mother laughing 
and talking together and paying no at- 
tention to my misery. I could hear 
Toot, who used to be making all sorts 
of little presents for me, whistling as 
he brought in the wood and water, and 
then ''cleaned up" to go to see his 



SOLITUDE 37 



Tulula, with never a thought of me. 
And I said to myself that the best thing 
I could do was to grow up and get 
away from a place where I was no 
longer wanted. 

No one noticed my sufferings further 
than sometimes to say impatiently, 
''What makes" you act so strange, 
child?" And to that, of course, I an- 
swered nothing, for what I had to say 
would not, I felt, be understood. 

One morning in June I left home with 
my resentment burning fiercely within 
me. I had not cared for the things we 
had for breakfast, for I was half-ill 
with fretting and with the closeness of 
the day, but my lack of appetite had 
been passed by with the remark that 
any one was likely not to have an ap- 
petite on such a close day. But I was 
so languid, and so averse to taking up 
the usual round of things, that I begged 



38 PAINTED WINDOWS 

mother to let me stay at home. She 
shook her head decidedly. 

''You've been out of school too many 
days already this term," she said. 
' ' Run along now, or you '11 be late ! ' ' 

''Please — " I began, for my head 
really was whirling, although, quite as 
much, perhaps, from my perversity as 
from any other cause. Mother turned 
on me one of her "lastword" glances. 

" Go to school without another word, ' ' 
she said, quietly. 

I knew that quiet tone, and I went. 
And now I was sure that all was over 
between my parents and myself. I be- 
gan to wonder if I need really wait till 
I was grown up before leaving home. 
So miserably absorbed was I in think- 
ing of this, and in pitying myself with 
a consuming pity, that everything at 
school seemed to pass like the shadow 
of a dream. I blundered in whatever 
I tried to do, was sharply scolded for 



SOLITUDE 39 



not hearing the teacher until she had 
spoken my name three times, and was 
holding on to myself desperately in my 
effort to keep back a flood of tears, 
when I became aware that something 
was happening. 

There suddenly was a perfect silence 
in the room — the sort of silence that 
makes the heart beat too fast. The 
mist swimming before me did not, I per- 
ceived, come from my own eyes, but 
from the changing colour of the air, the 
usual transparency of which was being 
tinged with yellow. The sultriness of 
the day was deepening, and seemed to 
carry a threat with it. 

''Something is going to happen," 
thought I, and over the whole room 
spread the same conviction. Electric 
currents seemed to snap from one con- 
sciousness to another. We dropped our 
books, and turned our eyes toward the 
western windows, to look upon a 



40 PAINTED WINDOWS 

changed world. It was as if we peered 
through yellow glass. In the sky soft- 
looking, tawny clouds came tumbling 
along like playful cats — or tigers. A 
moment later we saw that they were 
not playful, but angry; they stretched 
out claws, and snarled as they did so. 
One claw reached the tall chimneys of 
the schoolhouse, another tapped at the 
cupola, one was thrust through the wall 
near where I sat. 

Then it grew black, and there was a 
bellowing all about us, so that the com- 
mands of the teacher and the screams 
of the children barely could be heard. 
I knew little or nothing. My shoulder 
was stinging, something had hit me on 
the side of the head, my eyes were full 
of dust and mortar, and my feet were 
carrying me with the others along the 
corridor, down the two flights of wide 
stairs. I do not think we pushed each 
other or were reckless. My recollec- 



SOLITUDE 41 



tion is only of many shadowy figures 
flying on with sure feet out of the build- 
ing that seemed to be falling in upon us. 

Presently we were out on the land- 
ing before the door, with one more 
flight of steps before us, that reached 
to the street. Something so strong that 
it might not be denied gathered me up 
in invisible arms, whirled me round 
once or twice and dropped me, not un- 
gently, in the middle of the road. And 
then, as I struggled to my knees and, 
wiping the dust from my eyes, looked 
up, I saw dozens of others being lifted 
in the same way, and blown off into the 
yard or the street. The larger ones 
were trying to hold on to the smaller, 
and the teachers were endeavouring to 
keep the children from going out of the 
building, but their efforts were of no 
avail. The children came on, and were 
blown about like leaves. 

Then I saw what looked like a high 



42 PAINTED WINDOWS 

yellow wall advancing upon me — a roar- 
ing and fearsome mass of driven dust, 
sticks, debris. It came over me that my 
own home might be there, in strips and 
fragments, to beat me down and kill 
me ; and with the thought came a swift 
little vision out of my geography of the 
Arabs in a sand-storm on the desert. I 
gathered up my fluttering dress skirt, 
held it tight about my head, and lay flat 
upon the ground. 

It seemed as if a long time passed, 
a time in which I knew very little ex- 
cept that I was fighting for my breath 
as I never had fought for anything. 
There were more hurts and bruises 
now, but they did not matter. Just to 
draw my own breath in my own way 
seemed to be the only thing in the 
world that was of any account. And 
then there was a shaft of flame, an ear- 
splitting roar, and the rain was upon 



SOLITUDE 4S 



US in sheets, in streams, in visible riv- 
ers. 

I imagined that it would last a long 
time, and wondered in a daze how I 
could get home in a rain like that — 
for I should have to face it. I could 
see that in a few seconds the gutters 
had begun to race, the road where I 
lay was a stream, and then — then the 
rain ceased. Never was anything so 
astonishing. The sky came out blue, 
tattered rags of cloud raced across it, 
and I had time to conclude that, whip- 
ped and almost breathless though I 
was, I was still alive. 

And then I saw a curious sight. Down 
the street in every direction came rush- 
ing hatless men and women. Here and 
there a wild-eyed horse was being 
lashed along. All the town was coming. 
They were in their work clothes, in 
their slippers, in their wrappers — they 
were in anything and everything. Some 



44 PAINTED WINDOWS 

of them sobbed as they ran, some called 
aloud names that I knew. They were 
fathers and mothers looking for their 
children. 

And who was that — that woman with 
a white face, with hair falling about her 
shoulders, where it had fallen as she 
ran — that woman whose breath came 
between her teeth strangely and who 
called my name over and over, bleat- 
ingly, as a mother sheep calls its lamb? 
At first I did not recognise her, and 
then, at last, I knew. And that creature 
with the rolling eyes and the curious 
ash-coloured face who, mumbling some- 
thing over and over in his throat, came 
for me, and snatched me up and wiped 
my face free of mud, and felt of me 
here and there with trembling hands — 
who was he ? 

And breaking out of the crowd of 
men who had come running from the 
street of stores and offices, was an- 



SOLITUDE 45 



other strange being, with a sort of bat- 
tle light in his eyes, who, seeing me, 
gathered me to him and bore me away 
toward home. Looking back, I could 
see the woman I knew following, lean- 
ing on the arm of the boy with the roll- 
ing eyes, whose eyes had ceased to roll, 
and who was" quite recognisable now as 
Toot. 

A happiness that was almost as ter- 
rible as sorrow welled up in my heart. 
I did not weep, or laugh, or talk. All 
I had experienced had carried me be- 
yond mere excitement into exultation. 
I exulted in life, in love. My conceit 
and sulkiness died in that storm, as did 
many another thing. I was alive. I 
was loved. I said it over and over to 
myself silently, in **my heart's deep 
core," while mother washed me with 
trembling hands in my own dear room, 
bound up my hurts, braided my hair, 
and put me, in a fresh night-dress, into 



46 PAINTED WINDOWS 

my bed. I do not recall that we talked 
to each other, but in every caress of 
her hands as she worked I felt the un- 
spoken assurances of a love such as I 
had not dreamed of. 

Father had gone running back to the 
school to see if he could be of any as- 
sistance to his neighbours, and had 
taken Toot with him, but they were 
back presently to say that beyond a few 
sharp injuries and broken bones, no 
harm had been done to the children. It 
was considered miraculous that no one 
had been killed or seriously injured, 
and I noticed that father's voice trem- 
bled as he told of it, and that mother 
could not answer, and that Toot sobbed 
like a big sUly boy. 

Then as we talked together, behold, 
a second storm was upon us — a sharp 
black blast of wind and rain, not ter- 
rifying, like the other, but with an 



SOLITUDE 47 



**I've-conie-to-spend-the-day" sort of 
aspect. 

But no one seemed to mind very 
much. I was carried down to the sit- 
ting-room. Toot busied himself com- 
ing and going on this errand and on 
that, fastening the doors, closing the 
windows, running out to see to the ani- 
mals, and coming back again. Father 
and mother set the table. They kept 
close together; and now and then they 
looked over at me, without saying any- 
thing, but with shining eyes. 

The storm died down to a quiet rain. 
From the roof of the porch the drops 
fell in silver strings, like beads. Then 
the sun came out and turned them into 
shining crystal. The birds began to 
sing again, and when we threw open the 
windows delicious odours of fresh earth 
and flowering shrub greeted us. Mother 
began to sing as she worked. And I 
sank softly to sleep, thrilled with the 



48 PAINTED WINDOWS 

marvels of the world — not of the tem- 
pest, but of the peace. 

The sweet familiarity of the faces 
and the walls and the furniture and the 
garden was like a blessing. There was 
not a chair there that I would have ex- 
changed for any other chair — not a tree 
that I would have parted with — ^not a 
custom of that simple, busy place that 
I would have changed. I knew now all 
my stupidity — and my good fortune. 



in 

FKIENDSHIP 

WHEN I look back upon the village 
where I lived as a child, I can- 
not remember that there were any divi- 
sions in our society. This group went 
to the Congregational church, and that 
to the Presbyterian, but each family 
felt itself to be as good as any other, 
and even if, ordinarily, some of them 
withdrew themselves in mild exclusive- 
ness, on all occasions of public celebra- 
tion, or when in trouble, we stood to- 
gether in the pleasantest and most un- 
affected democracy. 

There were only the **Bad Madi- 
gans" outside the pale. 

The facts about the Bad Madigans 

49 



50 PAINTED WINDOWS 

were, no doubt, serious enough, but the 
fiction was even more appalling. As to 
facts, the father drank, the mother fol- 
lowed suit, the appearance of the house 
— a ramshackle old place beyond the 
fair-grounds — was a scandal; the chil- 
dren could not be got to go to school 
for any length of time, and, when they 
were there, each class in which thev 
were put felt itself to be in disgrace, 
and the dislike focused upon the in- 
truders, sent them, sullen and hateful, 
back to their lair. And, indeed, the 
Madigan house seemed little more than 
a lair. It had been rather a fine house 
once, and had been built for the oc- 
cupancy of the man who owned the fair- 
grounds ; but he choosing finally to live 
in the village, had permitted the house 
to fall into decay, until only a family 
with no sense of order or self-respect 
would think of occupying it. 

When there occurred one of the rare 



FRIENDSHIP 51 

burglaries in the village, when anything 
was missing from a clothes-line, or a 
calf or pig disappeared, it was gen- 
erally laid to the Madigans. Unac- 
counted-for fires were supposed to be 
their doing; they were accorded respon- 
sibility for vicious practical jokes; and 
it was generally felt that before we 
were through with them they would 
commit some blood-curdling crime. 

When, as sometimes happened, I had 
met one of the Bad Madigans on the 
road, or down on the village street, my 
heart had beaten as if I was face to 
face with a company of banditti; but 
I cannot say that this excitement was 
caused by aversion alone. The truth 
was, the Bad Madigans fascinated me. 
They stood out from all the others, 
proudly and disdainfully like Robin 
Hood and his band, and I could not get 
over the idea that they said: ''Fetch 
me yonder bow!" to each other; or, 



52 PAINTED WINDOWS 

' * Go slaughter me a ten-tined buck ! " I 
felt that they were fortunate in not be- 
ing held down to hours like the rest of 
us. Out of bed at six-thirty, at table 
by seven, tidying bedroom at seven- 
thirty, dusting sitting-room at eight, on 
way to school at eight-thirty, was not 
for "the likes of them!" Only we, 
slaves of respectability and of an inor- 
dinate appetite for order, suffered such 
monotony and drabness to rule. I knew 
the Madigan boys could go fishing 
whenever they pleased, that the Madi- 
gan girls picked the blackberries before 
any one else could get out to them, that 
every member of the family could pack 
up and go picnicking for days at a 
time, and that any stray horse was 
likely to be ridden bareback, within an 
inch of its life, by the younger mem- 
bers of the family. 

Only once however, did I have a 
chance to meet one of these modern 



FRIENDSHIP 58 

Visigoths face to face, and the feelings 
aroused by that incident remained the 
darling secret of my youth. I dared tell 
no one, and I longed, yet feared, to have 
the experience repeated. But it never 
was ! It happened in this way : 

On a certain Sunday afternoon in 
May, my father and mother and I went 
to Emmons' Woods. To reach Em- 
mons' Woods, you went out the back 
door, past the pump and the currant 
bushes, then down the path to the 
chicken-houses, and so on, by way of 
the woodpile, to the south gate. After 
that, you went west toward the clover 
meadows, past the house where the 
Crazy Lady lived — here, if you were 
alone, you ran — and then, reaching the 
verge of the woods, you took your 
choice of climbing a seven-rail fence or 
of walking a quarter of a mile till you 
came to the bars. The latter was much 



54 PAINTED WINDOWS 

better for the lace on a Sunday petti- 
coat. 

Once in Emmons' Woods, there was 
enchantment. An eagle might come — 
or a blue heron. There had been bears 
in Emmons' Woods — bears with roll- 
ing eyes and red mouths from which 
their tongues lolled. There was one 
place for pinky trillium, and another 
for gentians; one for tawny adders' 
tongues, and another for yellow Dutch- 
man's breeches. In the sap-starting 
season, the maples dripped their lus- 
cious sap into little wooden cups ; later, 
partridges nested in the sun-burned 
grass. There was no lake or river, but 
there was a pond, swarming with a 
vivacious population, and on the hard- 
baked clay of the pond beach the green 
beetles aired their splendid changeable 
silks and sandpipers hopped ridicu- 
lously. 

It was, curiously enough, easier to 



FRIENDSHIP 55 

run than to walk in Emmons' Woods, 
and even more natural to dance than to 
run. One became acquainted with 
squirrels, established intimacies with 
chipmunks, and was on some sort of 
civil relation with blackbirds. And, 
oh, the tossing green of the young wil- 
lows, where the lilac distance melted 
into the pale blue of the sky ! And, oh, 
the budding of the maples and the fring- 
ing of the oaks; and, oh, the blossom- 
ing of the tulip trees and the garner- 
ing of the chestnuts! And then, the 
wriggling things in the grass ; the pro- 
cession of ants; the coquetries of the 
robins; and the Beyond, deepening, 
deepening into the forest where it was 
safe only for the woodsmen to go. 

On this particular Sunday one of us 
was requested not to squeal and run 
about, and to remember that we wore 
our best shoes and need not mess them 
unnecessarily. It was hard to be re- 



56 PAINTED WINDOWS 

minded just when the dance was getting 
into my feet, but I tried to have Sun- 
day manners, and went along in the still 
woods, wondering why the purple col- 
ours disappeared as we came on and 
what had been distance became near- 
ness. There was a beautiful, aching 
vagueness over everything, and it was 
not strange that father, who had 
stretched himself on the moss, and 
mother, who was reading Godey's La- 
dies' Book, should presently both of 
them be nodding. So, that being a well- 
established fact — I established iit by 
hanging over them and staring at their 
eyelids — it seemed a good time for me 
to let the dance out of my toes. Still 
careful of my fresh linen frock, and 
remembering about the best shoes, I 
went on, demurely, down the green al- 
leys of the wood. Now I stepped on 
patches of sunshine, now in pools of 
shadow. I thought of how naughty I 



FRIENDSHIP 57 

was to run away like this, and of what 
a mistake people made who said I was 
a good, quiet child. I knew that I 
looked sad and prim, but I really hated 
my sadness and primness and good- 
ness, and longed to let out all the in- 
teresting, wild, naughty thoughts there 
were in me. I wanted to act as if I were 
bewitched, and to tear up vines and 
wind them about me, to shriek to the 
echoes, and to scold back at the squir- 
rels. I wanted to take off my clothes 
and rush into the pond, and swim like 
a fish, or wriggle like a pollywog. I 
wanted to climb trees and drop from 
them; and, most of all — oh, with what 
longing — did I wish to lift myself above 
the earth and fly into the bland blue 
air! 

I came to a hollow where there was 
a wonderful greenness over everything, 
and I said to myself that I would be 
bewitched at last. I would dance and 



58 PAINTED WINDOWS 

whirl and call till, perhaps, some kind 
of a creature as wild and wicked and 
wonderful as I, would come out of the 
woods and join me. So I forgot about 
the fresh linen frock, and wreathed my- 
self with wild grape-vine ; I cared noth- 
ing for my fresh braids and wound 
trillium in my hair ; and I ceased to re- 
member my new shoes, and whirled 
around and around in the leafy mould, 
singing and shouting. 

I grew madder and madder. I seemed 
not to be myself at all, but some sort 
of a wood creature ; and just when the 
trees were looking larger than ever they 
did before, and the sky higher up, a 
girl came running down from a sort of 
embankment where a tornado had made 
a path for itself and had hurled some 
great chestnuts and oaks in a tumbled 
mass. The girl came leaping down the 
steep sides of this place, her arms out- 
spread, her feet bare, her dress no more 



FRIENDSHIP 59 

than a rag the colour of the tree-trunks. 
She had on a torn green jacket, which 
made her seem more than ever like 
some one who had just stepped out of 
a hollow tree, and, to my unspeakable 
happiness, she joined me in my dance. 

I shall never forget how beautiful she 
was, with her wild tangle of dark hair, 
and her deep blue eyes and ripe lips. 
Her cheeks were flaming red, and her 
limbs strong and brown. She did not 
merely shout and sing; she whistled, 
and made calls like the birds, and cawed 
like a crow, and chittered like a squir- 
rel, and around and around the two of 
us danced, crazy as dervishes with the 
beauty of the spring and the joy of be- 
ing free. 

By and by we were so tired we had 
to stop, and then we sat down panting 
and looked at each other. At that we 
laughed, long and foolishly, but, after 



60 PAINTED WINDOWS 

a time, it occurred to us that we had 
many questions to ask. 

*'How did you get here?" I asked the 
girl. 

*'I was walking my lone," she said, 
speaking her words as if there was a 
rich thick quality to them, ''and I 
heard you screeling. ' ' 

''Won't you get lost, alone like 
that?" 

"I can't get lost," she sighed. "I'd 
like to, hut I can't." 

"Where do you live?" 

"Beyant the fair-grounds." 

"You're not — not Norah Madigan?" 

She leaned back and clasped her 
hands behind her head. Then she 
smiled at me teasingly. 

"I am that," she said, showing her 
perfect teeth. 

I caught my breath with a sharp 
gasp. Ought I to turn back to my par- 
ents? Had I been so naughty that I 



FRIENDSHIP 61 

had called the naughtiest girl in the 
whole county out to me? 

But I could not bring myself to leave 
her. She was leaning forward and 
looking at me now with mocking eyes. 

**Are you afraid?" she demanded. 

** Afraid of what!" I asked, knowing 
quite well what she meant. 

**0f me?" she retorted. 

At that second an agreeable truth 
overtook me. I leaned forward, too, 
and put my hand on hers. 

* ' Why, I like you ! " I cried. She be- 
gan laughing again, but this time there 
was no mockery in it. She ran her fin- 
gers over the embroidery on my linen 
frock, she examined the lace on my pet- 
ticoat, looked at the bows on my shoes, 
and played delicately with the locket 
dangling from the slender chain around 
my neck. 

**Do you know — other girls?" she al- 
most whispered. 



62 PAINTED WINDOWS 

I nodded. ''Lots and lots of 'em," 
I said. ''Don't you?" 

She shook her head in wistful denial. 

"Us Madigans," she said, "keeps to 
ourselves." She said it so haughtily 
that for a moment I was almost per- 
suaded into thinking that they lived 
their solitary lives from choice. But, 
glancing up at her, I saw a blush that 
covered her face, and there were tears 
in her eyes. 

' ' Well, anyway, ' ' said I quickly, * * we 
know each other." 

"Yes," she cried, "we do that!" 

She got up, then, and ran to a great 
tree from which a stout grape-vine was 
swinging, and pulling at it with her 
strong arms, she soon had it made into 
a practical swing. 

"Come!" she called — "come, let's 
swing together!" 

She helped me to balance myself on 
the rope-like vine, and, placing her feet 



FRIENDSHIP 6S 

outside of mine, showed me how to 
**work up" till we were sweeping with 
a fine momentum through the air. We 
shrieked with excitement, and urged 
each other on to more and more frantic 
exertions. We were like two birds, but 
to birds flying is no novelty. With us 
it was, which' made us happier than 
birds. But I, for my part, was no more 
delighted with my swift flights through 
the air than I was with the shining eyes 
and flashing teeth of the girl opposite 
me. I liked her strength, and the way 
in which her body bent and swayed. 
Once more, she seemed like a wood- 
child — a wild, mad, gay creature from 
the tree. I felt as if I had drawn a play- 
mate from elf -land, and I liked her a 
thousand times better than those 
proper little girls who came to see me 
of a Saturday afternoon. 

Well, there we were, rocking and 
screaming, and telling each other that 



64 PAINTED WINDOWS 

we were hawks, and that we were fly- 
ing high over the world, when the anx- 
ious and austere voice of my mother 
broke upon our ears. We tried to stop, 
but that was not such an easy matter 
to do, and as we twisted and writhed, 
to bring our grape-vine swing to a 
standstill, there was a slow rending and 
breaking which struck terror to our 
souls. 

Jump ! ' ' commanded Norah — 

jump! the vine's breaking!" "We 
leaped at the same moment, she safely. 
My foot caught in a stout tendril, and 
I fell headlong, scraping my forehead 
on the ground and tearing a triangular 
rent in the pretty, new frock. Mother 
came running forward, and the expres- 
sion on her face was far from being 
the one I liked to see. 

''What have you been doing?" she 
demanded. ''I thought you were get- 






FRIENDSHIP 65 

ting old enough and sensible enough to 
take care of yourself ! ' ' 

I must have been a depressing sight, 
viewed with the eyes of a careful 
mother. Blood and mould mingled on 
my face, my dress needed a laundress 
as badly as a dress could, and my shoes 
were scratched and muddy. 

"And who is this girl?" asked 
mother. I had become conscious that 
Norah was at my feet, wiping off my 
shoes with her queer little brown frock. 

"It's a new friend of mine," gasped 
I, beginning to see that I must lose her, 
and hoping the lump in my throat 
wouldn't get any bigger than it was. 

* ' What is her name ? ' ' asked mother. 
I had no time to answer. The girl did 
that. 

"I'm Norah Madigan," she said. 
Her tone was respectful, and, maybe, 
sad. At any rate, it had a curious 
sound. 



66 PAINTED WINDOWS 

**Norah Mad-i-gan?" asked mother 
doubtfully, stringing out the word. 

'^Yessum," said a low voice. ** Good- 
bye, mum." 

*'0h, Norah!" cried I, a strange pain 
stabbing my heart. ''Come to see 
me " 

But my mother *s voice broke in, firm 
and kind. 

''Good-bye, Norah," said she. 

I saw Norah turn and run up among 
the trees, almost as swiftly and silently 
as a hare. Once, she turned to look 
back. I was watching, and caught the 
chance to wave my hand to her. 

"Come!" commanded mother, and 
we went back to where father was sit- 
ting. 

"What do you think!" said mother. 
"I found the child playing with one of 
the Bad Madigans. Isn't she a sight!" 

The lump in my throat swelled to a 
terrible size; something buzzed in my 



FRIENDSHIP 67 

ears, and I heard some one weeping. 
For a second or two I didn't realise that 
it was myself. 

''Well, never mind, dear,'* said 
mother's voice soothingly. "The frock 
will wash, and the tear will mend, and 
the shoes will black. Yes, and the 
scratches will heal." 

"It isn't that," I sobbed. "Oh, oh, 
it isn't that!" 

"What is it, then, for goodness 
sake?" asked mother. 

But I would not tell. I could not 
tell. How could I say that the daughter 
of the Bad Madigans was the first real 
and satisfying playmate I had ever 
had? 



IT 

FAME 

AS I remember the boys and girls 
who grew np with me, I think of 
them as artists, or actors, or travellers, 
or rich merchants. Each of us, by the 
time we were half through grammar 
school, had selected a career. So far 
as I recollect, this career had very lit- 
tle to do with our abilities. We merely 
chose something that suited us. Our 
energy and our vanity crystallised into 
particular shapes. There was a sort of 
religion abroad in the West at that time 
that a person could do almost anything 
he set out to do. The older people, as 
well as the children, had an idea that 

68 



FAME 65 

the world was theirs — they all were 
Monte Cristos in that respect. 

As for me, I had decided to be an 
orator. 

At the time of making this decision, 
I was nine years of age, decidedly thin 
and long drawn ont, with two brown 
braids down my back, and a terrific 
shyness which I occasionally overcame 
with such a magnificent splurge that 
those who were not acquainted with my 
peculiarities probably thought me a 
shamefully assertive child. 

I based my oratorical aspirations 
upon my having taken the prize a num- 
ber of times in Sunday-school for learn- 
ing the most New Testament verses, 
and upon the fact that I always could 
make myself heard to the farthest cor- 
ner of the room. I also felt that I had 
a great message to deliver to the world 
when I got around it, though in this, I 
was in no way different from several 



70 PAINTED WINDOWS 

of my friends. I had noticed a number 
of things in the world that were not 
quite right, and which I thought needed 
attention, and I believed that if I were 
quite good and studied elocution, in a 
little while I should be able to set my 
part of the world right, and perhaps 
even extend my influence to adjoining 
districts. 

Meantime I practised terrible vocal 
exercises, chiefly consisting of a rau- 
cous ''caw" something like a crow's 
favourite remark, and advocated by my 
teacher in elocution for no reason that 
I can now remember; and I stood be- 
fore the glass for hours at a time mak- 
ing grimaces so as to acquire the ''ac- 
tor's face," till my frightened little sis- 
ters implored me to turn back into my- 
self again. 

It was a great day for me when I 
was asked to participate in the Harvest 
Home Festival at our church on 



FAME 71 

Thanksgiving Day. I looked upon it as 
the beginning of my career, and bought 
crimping papers so that my hair could 
be properly fluted. Of course, I wanted 
a new dress for the occasion, and I 
spent several days in planning the kind 
of a one I thought best suited to such a 
memorable event. I even picked out the 
particular lace pattern I wanted for the 
ruffles. This was before I submitted the 
proposition to Mother, however. When 
I told her about it she said she could 
see no use in getting a new dress and 
going to all the trouble of making it 
when my white one with the green 
harps was perfectly good. 

This was such an unusual dress and 
had gone through so many vicissitudes, 
that I really was devotedly attached to 
it. It had, in the beginning, belonged 
to my Aunt Bess, and in the days of 
its first glory had been a sheer Irish 
linen lawn, with tiny green harps on it 



72 PAINTED WINDOWS 

at agreeable intervals. But in the 
course of time, it had to be sent to the 
wash-tub, and then, behold, all the lit- 
tle lovely harps followed the example 
of the harp that "once through Tara's 
hall the soul of music shed," and dis- 
appeared! Only vague, dirty, yellow 
reminders of their beauty remained, 
not to decorate, but to disfigure the 
fine fabric. 

Aunt Bess, naturally enough, felt ir- 
ritated, and she gave the goods to 
mother, saying that she might be able 
to boil the yellow stains out of it and 
make me a dress. I had gone about 
many a time, like love amid the ruins, 
in the fragments of Aunt Bess 's splen- 
dour, and I was not happy in the 
thought of dangling these dimmed re- 
minders of Ireland's past around with 
me. But mother said she thought I'd 
have a really truly white Sunday best 
dress out of it by the time she was 



FAME 7« 

through with it. So she prepared a 
strong solution of sodium and things, 
and boiled the breadths, and every little 
green harp came dancing back as if 
awaiting the hand of a new Dublin poet. 
The green of them was even more 
charming than it had been at first, and 
I, as happy as if I had acquired the 
golden harp for which I then vaguely 
longed, went to Sunday-school all that 
summer in this miraculous dress of 
now - you - see - them-and-no w-y ou-don 't, 
and became so used to being asked if I 
were Irish that my heart exulted when 
I found that I might — fractionally — 
claim to be, and that one of the Fenian 
martyrs had been an ancestor. For a 
year, even, after that discovery of the 
Fenian martyr, ancestors were a fa- 
vorite study of mine. 

Well, though the dress became some- 
thing more than familiar to the eyes 
of my associates, I was so attached to 



74 PAINTED WINDOWS 

it that I felt no objection to wearing 
it on the great occasion; and, that be- 
ing settled, all that remained was to 
select the piece which was to reveal my 
talents to a hitherto nnappreciative — 
or, perhaps I should say, unsuspecting 
— group of friends and relatives. It 
seemed to me that I knew better than 
my teacher (who had agreed to select 
the pieces for her pupils) possibly 
could what sort of a thing best repre- 
sented my talents, and so, after some 
thought, I selected ** Antony and Cleo- 
patra,'* and as I lagged along the too- 
familiar road to school, avoiding the 
companionship of my acquaintances, I 
repeated : 

I am dying, Egypt, dying! 

Ebbs the crimson life-tide fast, 
And the dark Plutonian shadows 

Gather on the evening blast. 

Sometimes I grew so impassioned, so 
heedless of all save my mimic sorrow 



FAME 75 



and the swing of the purple lines, that 
I conld not bring myself to modify my 
voice, and the passers-by heard my 
shrill tones vibrating with : 

As for thee, star-eyed Egyptian! 

Glorious sorceress of the Nile! 
Light the path to Stygian horrors 

With the splendour of thy smile. 

I wiped dishes to the rhythm of such 
phrases as ''scarred and veteran le- 
gions, ' ' and laced my shoes to the music 
of ''Though no glittering guards sur- 
round me." 

Confident that no one could fail to 
see the beauty of these lines, or the pro- 
priety of the identification of myself 
with Antony, I called upon my Sunday- 
school teacher. Miss Goss, to report. I 
never had thought of Miss Goss as a 
blithe spirit. She was associated in my 
mind with numerous solemn occasions, 
and I was surprised to find that on this 
day she unexpectedly developed a trait 



7fi PAINTED WINDOWS 

of breaking into nervous laughter. I 
had got as far as '* Should the base ple- 
beian rabble — " when Miss Goss broke 
down in what I could not but regard as 
a fit of giggles, and I ceased abruptly. 
She pulled herself together after a 
moment or two, and said if I would fol- 
low her to the library she thought she 
could find something — here she hesi- 
tated, to conclude with, ''more within 
the understanding of the other chil- 
dren. ' * I saw that she thought my feel- 
ings were hurt, and as I passed a mir- 
ror I feared she had some reason to 
think so. My face was uncommonly 
flushed, and a look of indignation had 
crept, somehow, even into my braids, 
which, having been plaited too tightly, 
stuck out in crooks and kinks from the 
side of my head. Incidentally, I was 
horrified to notice how thin I was — 
thin, even for a dying Antony — and my 
frock was so outfi*rown that it hardly 



FAME 77 

covered my knees. *' Ridiculous ! " I 
said under my breath, as I confronted 
this miserable figure — so shamefully in- 
significant for the vicarious emotions 
which it had been housing. ''Ridicu- 
lous!" 

I hated Miss Goss, and must have 
shown it in my stony stare, for she put 
her arm around me and said it was a 
pity I had been to all the trouble to 
learn a poem which was — well, a trifle 
too^ — too old — but that she hoped to find 
something equally ''pretty" for me to 
speak. At the use of that adjective in 
connection with William Lytle's lines, I 
wrenched away from her grasp and 
stood in what I was pleased to think a 
haughty calm, awaiting her directions. 

She took from the shelves a little vol- 
ume of Whittier, bound in calf, hand- 
ling it as tenderly as if it were a price- 
less possession. Some pressed violets 
dropped out as she opened it, and she 



78 PAINTED WINDOWS 

replaced them with devotional fingers. 
After some time she decided upon a 
lyric lament entitled *'Eva." I was 
asked to run over the verses, and found 
them remarkably easy to learn ; fatally 
impossible to forget. I presently arose 
and with an impish betrayal of the pov- 
erty of rhyme and the plethora of sen- 
timent, repeated the thing relentlessly. 

for faith like thine, sweet Eva, 
Lighting all the solemn reevah [river], 
And the blessings of the poor, 
Wafting to the heavenly shoor [shore]. 

"I do think," said Miss Goss gently, 
* ' that if you tried, my child, you might 
manage the rhymes just a little better." 

**But if you're born in Michigan," I 
protested, "how can you possibly make 
*Eva' rhyme with * never' and *be- 
Uever'?" 

** Perhaps it is a little hard," Miss 
Goss agreed, and still clinging to her 
Whittier, she exhumed **The Pump- 



FAME 79 

kin," which she thought precisely fitted 
for our Harvest Home festival. This 
was quite another thing from *'Eva," 
and I saw that only hours of study 
would fix it in my mind. I went to my 
home, therefore, with "The Pumpkin" 
delicately transcribed in Miss Goss's 
running hand, and I tried to get some 
comfort from the foreign allusions glit- 
tering through Whittier's kindly verse. 
As the days went by I came to have a 
certain fondness for those homely lines : 

— fruit loved of boyhood! — the old days re- 
calling, 

When wood grapes were purpling and brown 
nuts were falling! 

When wild, ugly faces we carved in the skin, 

Glaring out through the dark with a candle 
within ! 

When we laughed round the corn-heap, with 
hearts all in tune, 

Our chair a broad pumpkin — our lantern the 
moon, 

Telling tales of the fairy who travelled like 
steam 



80 PAINTED WINDOWS 

In a pumpkin-shell coach, with two rats for her 
team! 

On all sides this poem was considered 
very fitting, and I went to the festival 
with that comfortable feeling one has 
when one is moving with the majority 
and is wearing one's best clothes. 

I sat rigid with expectancy while my 
schoolmates spoke their ''pieces" and 
sang their songs. With frozen faces 
they faced each other in dialogues, lost 
their quavering voices, and stumbled 
down the stairs in their anguish of 
spirit. I pitied them, and thought how 
lucky it was that my memory never 
failed me, and that my voice carried so 
well that I could arouse even old Elder 
Waite from his slumbers. 

Then my turn came. My crimps 
were beautiful ; the green harps danced 
on my freshly-ironed frock, and I had 
on my new chain and locket. I relied 
upon a sort of mechanism in me to say : 



FAME 81 

greenly and fair in the lands of the sua, 
The vines of the goiird and the rich melon run. 

In this seemly manner Whittier's ode 
to the pumpkin began. I meant to go 
on to verses which I knew would de- 
light my audience — to references to the 
''crook-necks" ripening under the Sep- 
tember sun ; and to Thanksgiving gath- 
erings at which all smiled at the reun- 
ion of friends and the bounty of the 
board. 

What moistens the lip and brightens the eye! 
What calls back the past like the rich pump- 
kin pie! 

I was sure these lines would meet 
with approval, and having ' ' come down 
to the popular taste," I was prepared 
to do my best to please. 

After a few seconds, when the golden 
pumpkins that lined the stage had 
ceased to dance before my eyes, I 
thought I ought to begin to ''get hold 



82 PAINTED WINDOWS 

of my audience. ' ' Of course, my mem- 
ory would be giving me the right words, 
and my facile tongue running along re- 
liably, but I wished to demonstrate that 
''ability" which was to bring me fa- 
vour and fame. I listened to my own 
words and was shivered into silence. I 
was talking about ''dark Plutonian 
shadows"; I was begging "Egypt" to 
let her arms enfold me — I was, indeed, 
in the very thick of the forbidden poem. 
I could hear my thin, aspiring voicc 
reaching out over that paralysed audi- 
ence with : 

Though my scarred and veteran legions 
Bear their eagles high no morej 

And my wrecked and scattered galleys 
Strew dark Actium's fatal shore. 

My tongue seemed frozen, or some 
kind of a ratchet at the base of it had 
got out of order. For a moment — a 
moment can be the little sister of eter- 
nity — I could say nothing. Then I 



FAME 8S 

found myself in tlie clutches of the in- 
stinct for self-preservation. I felt it in 
me to stop the giggles of the girls on 
the front seat; to take the patronising 
smiles out of the tolerant eves of the 
grown people. Maybe my voice lost 
something of its piping insistence and 
was touched "with genuine feeling; per- 
haps some faint, faint spark of the di- 
vine fire which I longed to fan into a 
flame did flicker in me for that one time. 
I had the indescribable happiness of 
seeing the smiles die on the faces of my 
elders, and of hearing the giggles of my 
friends cease. 

I went to my seat amid what I was 
pleased to consider "thunders of ap- 
plause," and by way of acknowledg- 
ment, I spoke, with chastened propri- 
ety, TVhittier's ode to the pumpkin. 

I cannot remember whether or not I 
was scolded. I'm afraid, afterward, 
some people still laughed. As for me, 



84 PAINTED WINDOWS 

oddly enougli, my oratorical aspira- 
tions died. I decided there were other 
careers better fitted to one of my 
physique. So I had to go to the trouble 
of finding another career ; but just what 
it was I have forgotten. 



TO 

BEMOESB 

IT is extraordinary, when you come 
to think of it, how very few days, 
out of all the thousands that have 
passed, lift their heads from the grey 
plain of the forgotten — like bowlders in 
a level stretch of country. It is not 
alone the unimportant ones that are for- 
gotten; but, according to one's elders, 
many important ones have left no mark 
in the memory. It seems to me, as I 
think it over, that it was the days that 
affected the emotions that dwell with 
me, and I suppose all of us must be the 
same in this respect. 

Among those which I am never to 
forget is the day when Aunt Cordelia 

85 



86 PAINTED WINDOWS 

came to visit ns — my mother's aunt, 
she was — and when I discovered evil, 
and tried to understand what the use 
of it was. 

Great-aunt Cordelia was, as I often 
and often had been told, not only much 
travelled, rich and handsome, but good 
also. She was, indeed, an important 
personage in her own city, and it 
seemed to be regarded as an evidence 
of unusual family fealty that she 
should go about, now and then, briefly 
visiting all of her kinfolk to see how 
they fared in the world. I ought to 
have looked forward to meeting her, but 
this, for some perverse reason, I did 
not do. I wished I might run away 
and hide somewhere till her visit was 
over. It annoyed me to have to clean 
up the play-room on her account, and 
to help polish the silver, and to comb 
out the fringe of the tea napkins. I 
liked to help in these tasks ordinarily, 



REMORSE 87 



but to do it for the purpose of coming 
up to a visiting — and probably, a con- 
descending — goddess, somehow made 
me cross. 

Among other hardships, I had to take 
care of my little sister Julie all day. I 
loved Julie. .She had soft golden- 
brown curls fuzzing around on her 
head, and mischievous brown eyes — 
warm, extra-human eyes. There waa a 
place in the back of her neck, just below 
the point of her curls, which it was a 
privilege to kiss ; and though she could 
not yet talk, she had a throaty, beauti- 
ful little exclamation, which cannot be 
spelled any more than a bird note, with 
which she greeted all the things she 
liked — a flower, or a toy, or mother. 
But loving Julie as she sat in mother's 
lap, and having to care for her all of 
a shining Saturday, were two quite dif- 
ferent things. As the hours wore along 
I became bored with looking at the 



8S PAINTED WINDOWS 

golden curls of my baby sister; I had 
no inclination to kiss the ''honey-spot" 
in the back of her neck; and when she 
fretted from heat and teething and my 
perfunctory care, I grew angry. 

I knew mother was busy making cus- 
tards and cakes for Aunt Cordelia, and 
I longed to be in watching these pleas- 
ing operations. I thought — but what 
does it matter what I thought? I was 
bad! I was so bad that I was glad I 
was bad. Perhaps it was nerves. May- 
be I really had taken care of the baby 
too long. But however that may be, for 
the first time in my life I enjoyed the 
consciousness of having a bad disposi- 
tion — or perhaps I ought to say that I 
felt a fiendish satisfaction in the discov- 
ery that I had one. 

Along in the middle of the afternoon 
three of the girls in the neighbourhood 
came over to play. They had their 
dolls, and they wanted to ''keep house" 



REMORSE 9» 



in the **new part" of our home. We 
were living in a roomy and comfortable 
''addition," which had, oddly enough, 
been built before the building to which 
it was finally to serve as an annex. That 
is to say, it had been the addition be- 
fore there was anything to add it to. 
By this time, however, the new house 
was getting a trifle old, as it waited for 
the completion of its rather dispropor- 
tionate splendours; splendours which 
represented the ambitions rather than 
the achievements of the family. It tow- 
ered, large, square, imposing, with hints 
of M. Mansard's grandiose architectu- 
ral ideas in its style, in the very centre 
of a village block of land. From the 
first, it exercised a sort of "I dreamt I 
dwelt in marble halls" effect upon me, 
and in a vague way, at the back of my 
mind, floated the idea that when we 
passed from our modest home into 
this commanding edifice, well-trained 



90 PAINTED WINDOWS 

servants mysteriously would appear, 
beautiful gowns would be found await- 
ing my use in the closets, and father 
and mother would be able to take their 
ease, something after the fashion of the 
'landed gentry" of whom I had read 
in Scotch and English books. The ceil- 
ings of the new house were so high, the 
sweep of the stairs so dramatic, the size 
of the drawing-rooms so copious, that 
perhaps I hardly was to be blamed for 
expecting a transformation scene. 

But until this new life was realised, 
the clean, bare rooms made the best of 
all possible play-rooms, and with the 
light streaming in through the trees, 
and falling, delicately tinged with 
green, upon the new floors, and with 
the scent of the new wood all about, it 
was a place of indefinable enchantment. 
I was allowed to play there all I pleased 
— except when I had Julie. There were 
unguarded windows and yawning stair- 



REMORSE 91 



holes, and no steps as yet leading from 
the ground to the great opening where 
the carved front door was some time 
to be. Instead, there were planks, in- 
clined at a steep angle, beneath which 
lay the stones of which the foundation 
to the porch were to be made. Jagged 
pieces of yet unhewn sandstone they 
were, with cruel edges. 

But to-day when the girls said, * ' Oh, 
come!" my newly discovered badness 
echoed their words. I wanted to go 
with them. So I went. 

Out of the corner of my eye I could 
see father in the distance, but I 
wouldn't look at him for fear he would 
be magnetised into turning my way. 
The girls had gone up, and I followed, 
with Julie in my arms. Did I hear 
father call to me to stop? He always 
said I did, but I think he was mistaken. 
Perhaps I merely didn't wish to hear 
him. Anyway, I went on, balancing 



92 PAINTED WINDOWS 

myself as best I could. The other girls 
had reached the top, and turned to look 
at us, and I knew they were afraid. I 
think they would have held out their 
hands to help me, but I had both arms 
clasped about Julie. So I staggered on, 
got almost to the top, then seemed sub- 
merged beneath a wave of fears — mine 
and those of the girls — and fell! As 
I went, I curled like a squirrel around 
Julie, and when I struck, she was still 
in my grasp and on top of me. But she 
rolled out of my relaxing clutch after 
that, and when father and mother came 
running, she was lying on the stones. 
They thought she had fallen that way, 
and as the breath had been fairly 
knocked out of her little body, so that 
she was not crying, they were more 
frightened than ever, and ran with her 
to the house, wild with apprehension. 

As for me, I got up somehow and f ol- 
owed. I decided no bones were broken. 



REMORSE 9« 



but I was dizzy and faint, and aching 
from bruises. I saw my little friends 
running down the plank and making off 
along the poplar drive, white-faced and 
panting. I knew they thought Julie 
was dead and that I'd be hung. I had 
the same idea. 

When we got to the sitting-room I 
had a strange feeling of never having 
seen it before. The tall stove, the 
green and oak ingrain carpet, the green 
rep chairs, the what-not with its shells, 
the steel engravings on the walls, 
seemed absolutely strange. I sat down 
and counted the diamond-shaped figures 
on the oilcloth in front of the stove; 
and after a long time I heard Julie cry, 
and mother say with immeasurable re- 
lief: 

''Aside from a shaking up, I don't 
believe she's a bit the worse." 

Then some one brought me a cupful 
of cold water and asked me if I was 



94 PAINTED WINDOWS 

hurt. I shook my head and would not 
speak. I then heard, in simple and em- 
phatic Anglo-Saxon the opinions of my 
father and mother about a girl who 
would put her little sister's life in dan- 
ger, and would disobey her parents. 
And after that I was put in my moth- 
er's bedroom to pass the rest of the 
day, and was told I needn't expect to 
come to the table with the others. 

I accepted my fate stoically, and be- 
ing permitted to carry my own chair 
into the room, I put it by the western 
window, which looked across two miles 
of meadows waving in buckwheat, in 
clover and grass, and sat there in a cu- 
rious torpor of spirit. I was glad to 
be alone, for I had discovered a new 
idea — the idea of sin. I wished to be 
left to myself till I could think out what 
it meant. I believed I could do that by 
night, and, after I had got to the root 
of the matter, I could cast the whole 



REMORSE 95 



Ugly thing out of my soul and be good 
all the rest of my life. 

There was a large upholstered chair 
standing in front of me, and I put my 
head down on the seat of that and 
thought and thought. My thoughts 
reached so far that I grew frightened, 
and I was relieved when I felt the little 
soft grey veils drawing about me which 
I knew meant sleep. It seemed to me 
that I really ought to weep — that the 
circumstances were such that I should 
weep. But sleep was sweeter than 
tears, and not only the pain in my mind 
but the jar and bruise of my body 
seemed to demand that oblivion. So I 
gave way to the impulse, and the grey 
veils wrapped around and around me 
as a spider's web enwraps a fly. And 
for hours I knew nothing. 

When I awoke it was the close of day. 
Long tender shadows lay across the 
fields, the sky had that wonderful clear- 



96 PAINTED WINDOWS 

ness and kindness which is like a hu- 
man eye, and the soft wind puffing in 
at the window was sweet with field 
fragrance. A glass of milk and a plate 
with two slices of bread lay on the win- 
dow sill by me, as if some one had 
placed them there from the outside. I 
could hear birds settling down for the 
night, and cheeping drowsily to each 
other. My cat came on the scene and, 
seeing me, looked at me with serious, 
expanding eyes, twitched her whiskers 
cynically, and passed on. Presently I 
heard the voices of my family. They 
were re-entering the sitting-room. Sup- 
per was over — supper, with its cold 
meats and shining jellies, its ''floating 
island" and its fig cake. I could hear 
a voice that was new to me. It was 
deeper than my mother's, and its ac- 
cent was different. It was the sort of 
a voice that made you feel that its 
owner had talked with many different 



REMORSE 97 



kinds of people, and had contrived to 
hold her own with all of them. I knew 
it belonged to Aunt Cordelia. And now 
that I was not to see her, I felt my curi- 
osity arising in me. I wanted to look 
at her, and still more I wished to ask 
her about goodness. She was rich and 
good ! Was one the result of the other? 
And which came first? I dimly per- 
ceived that if there had been more 
money in our house there would have 
been more help, and I would not have 
been led into temptation — ^baby would 
not have been left too long upon my 
hands. However, after a few moments 
of self-pity, I rejected this thought. I 
knew I really was to blame, and it oc- 
curred to me that I would add to my 
faults if I tried to put the blame on any- 
body else. 

Now that the first shock was over and 
that my sleep had refreshed me, I be- 
gan to see what terrible sorrow had 



98 PAINTED WINDOWS 

been mine if the fall had really injured 
Julie ; and a sudden thought shook me. 
She might, after all, have been hurt in 
some way that would show itself later 
on. I yearned to look upon her, to see 
if all her sweetness and softness was in- 
tact. It seemed to me that if I could 
not see her the rising grief in me would 
break, and I would sob aloud. I didn't 
want to do that. I had no notion to 
call any attention to myself whatever, 
but see the baby I must. So, softly, 
and like a thief, I opened the door com- 
municating with the little dressing- 
room in which Julie 's cradle stood. The 
curtain had been drawn and it was al- 
most dark, but I found my way to 
Julie's bassinet. I could not quite see 
her, but the delicate odour of her 
breath came up to me, and I found her 
little hand and slipped my finger in it. 
It was gripped in a baby pressure, and 
I stood there enraptured, feeling as if 



REMORSE 99 



a flower had caressed me. I was 
thrilled through and through with hap- 
piness, and with love for this little crea- 
ture, whom my selfishness might have 
destroyed. There was nothing in what 
had happened during this moment or 
two when I stood by her side to assure 
me that all was well with her ; but I did 
so believe, and I said over and over: 
' ' Thank you, God ! Thank you, God I ' ' 

And now my tears began to flow. 
They came in a storm — a storm I could 
not control, and I fled back to mother's 
room, and stood there before the west 
window weeping as I never had wept 
before. 

The quiet loveliness of the closing 
day had passed into the splendour of 
the afterglow. Mighty wings as of 
bright angels, pink and shining white, 
reached up over the sky. The vault was 
purple above me, and paled to lilac, then 
to green of unimaginable tenderness. 



100 PAINTED WINDOWS 

Now I quenched my tears to look, and 
then I wept again, weeping no more for 
sorrow and loneliness and shame than 
for gratitude and delight in beauty. So 
fair a world I What had sin to do with 
it? I could not make it out. 

The shining wings grew paler, faded, 
then darkened; the melancholy sound 
of cow-bells stole up from the common. 
The birds were still ; a low wind rustled 
the trees. I sat thinking my young 
"night thoughts" of how marvellous it 
was for the sun to set, to rise, to keep 
its place in heaven — of how wrapped 
about with mysteries we were. "What 
if the world should start to falling 
through space? "Where would it land? 
"Was there even a bottom to the uni- 
verse? ''"World without end'* might 
mean that there was neither an end to 
space nor yet to time. I shivered at 
thought of such vastness. 



REMORSE 101 



Suddenly light streamed about me, 
warm arms enfolded me. 

*' Mother!" I murmured, and slipped 
from the unknown to the dear familiar- 
ity of her shoulder. 

It was, I soon perceived, a silk-clad 
shoulder. Mother had on her best 
dress ; nay, she wore her coral pin and 
ear-rings. Her lace collar was scented 
with Jockey Club, and her neck, into 
which I was burrowing, had the inde- 
scribable something that was not quite 
odour, not all softness, but was com- 
pounded of these and meant mother. 
She said little to me as she drew me 
away and bathed my face, brushed and 
plaited my hair, and put on my clean 
frock. But we felt happy together. I 
knew she was as glad to forgive as I 
was to be forgiven. 

In a little while she led me, blinking, 
into the light. A tall stranger, a lady 



102 PAINTED WINDOWS 

in prune-coloured silk, sat in the high- 
backed chair. 

**This is my eldest girl, Aunt Cor- 
delia,*' said my mother. I went for- 
ward timidly, wondering if I were 
really going to be greeted by this per- 
son who must have heard such terrible 
reports of me. I found myself caught 
by the hands and drawn into the em- 
brace of this new, grand acquaintance. 

''Well, I've been wanting to see 
you, ' ' said the rich, kind voice. * * They 
say you look as I did at your age. They 
say you are like me ! ' ' 

Like her — ^who was good! But no 
one referred to this difference or said 
anything about my sins. When we were 
sorry, was evil, then, forgotten and sin 
forgiven? A weight as of iron dropped 
from my spirit. I sank with a sigh on 
the hassock at my aunt's feet. I was 
once more a member of society. 



VI 



TBAVEL 



IT was time to say good-bye. 
I had been down to my little 
brother's grave and watered the sorrel 
that grew on it— I thought it was sor- 
row, and so tended it; and I had walked 
around the house and said good-bye to 
every window, and to the robin's nest, 
and to my playhouse in the shed. I 
had put a clean ribbon on the cat's neck, 
and kissed my doll, and given presents 
to my little sisters. Now, shivering be- 
neath my new grey jacket in the chill 
of the May morning air, I stood ready 
to part with my mother. She was a 
little flurried with having just ironed 
my pinafores and collars, and with hav- 

103 



]04 PAINTED WINDOWS 

ing put the last hook on my new Stuart 
plaid frock, and she looked me over 
with rather an anxious eye. As for me, 
I thought my clothes charming, and I 
loved the scarlet quill in my grey hat, 
and the set of my new shoes. I hoped, 
above all, that no one would notice that 
I was trembling and lay it down to fear. 
Of course, I had been away before. 
It was not the first time I had left 
everything to take care of itself. But 
this time I was going alone, and that 
gave rather a different aspect to things. 
To go into the country for a few days, 
or even to Detroit, in the company of 
a watchful parent, might be called a 
"visit"; but to go alone, partly by 
train and partly by stage, and to arrive 
by one's self, amounted to ''travel." I 
had an aunt who had travelled, and I 
felt this morning that love of travel 
ran in the family. Probably even 
Aunt Cordelia had been a trifle nervous, 



TRAVEL 105 



at first, when she started out for Ha- 
waii, say, or for Egypt. 

Mother and I were both fearful that 
the driver of the station 'bns hadn't 
really understood that he was to call. 
First she would ask father, and then I 
would ask him, if he was quite sure the 
man understood, and father said that 
if the man could understand English 
at all — and he supposed he could — he 
had understood that. Father was right 
about it, too, for just when we — that is, 
mother and I — were almost giving up, 
the 'bus horses swung in the big gate 
and came pounding up the drive be- 
tween the Lombardy poplars, which 
were out in their yellow-green spring 
dress. They were a bay team with a 
yellow harness which clinked splendidly 
with bone rings, and the 'bus was as 
yellow as a pumpkin, and shaped not 
unlike one, so that I gave it my instant 
approval. It was precisely the sort of 



106 PAINTED WINDOWS 



vehicle in which I would have chosen 
to go away. So absorbed was I in it 
that, though I must have kissed mother, 
I have really no recollection of it ; and 
it was only when we were swinging out 
of the gate, and I looked back and saw 
her standing in the door watching us, 
that a terrible pang came over me, so 
that for one crazy moment I thought 
I was going to jump out and run back 
to her. 

But I held on to father's hand and 
turned my face away from home with 
all the courage I could summon, and we 
went on through the town and out 
across a lonely stretch of country to the 
railroad. For we were an obstinate lit- 
tle town, and would not build up to the 
railroad because the railroad had re- 
fused to run up to us. It was a new 
station with a fine echo in it, and the 
man who called out the trains had a 
beautiful voice for echoes. It was ere- 



TRAVEL 107 



ated to inspire them and to encourage 
them, and I stood fascinated by the 
thunderous noises he was mailing till 
father seized me by the hand and thrust 
me into the care of the train conductor. 
They said something to each other in 
the sharp, explosive way men have, and 
the conductor took me to a seat and 
told me I was his girl for the time be- 
ing, and to stay right there till he came 
for me at my station. 

What amazed me was that the car 
should be full of people. I could not 
imagine where they all could be going. 
It was all very well for me, who be- 
longed to a family of travellers — as wit- 
ness Aunt Cordeha — to be going on a 
journey, but for these others, these 
many, many others, to be wandering 
around, heaven knows where, struck me 
as being not right. It seemed to take 
somewhat from the glory of my adven- 
ture. 



108 PAINTED WINDOWS 

However, I noticed that most of them 
looked poor. Their clothes were old 
and ugly ; their faces not those of pleas- 
ure-seekers. It was very difficult to 
imagine that they could afford a jour- 
ney, which was, as I believed, a great 
luxury. At first, the people looked to 
be all of a sort, but after a little I be- 
gan to see the differences, and to no- 
tice that this one looked happy, and 
that one sad, and another as if he had 
much to do and liked it, and several 
others as if they had very little idea 
where they were going or why. 

But I liked better to look from the 
windows and to see the world. The 
houses seemed quite familiar and as if 
I had seen them often before. I hardly 
could believe that I hadn't walked up 
those paths, opened those doors and 
seated myself at the tables. I felt that 
if I went in those houses I would know 
where everything was — just where the 



TRAVEL 109 



dishes were kept, and the Bible, and the 
jam. It struck me that houses were 
very much alike in the world, and that 
led to the thought that people, too, were 
probably alike. So I forgot what the 
conductor had said to me about keeping 
still, and I crossed over the aisle and 
sat down beside a little girl who was 
regrettably young, but who looked 
pleasant. Her mother and grand- 
mother were sitting opposite, and they 
smiled at me in a watery sort of way 
as if they thought a smile was expected 
of them. I meant to talk to the little 
girl, but I saw she was almost on the 
verge of tears, and it didn't take me 
long to discover what was the matter. 
Her little pink hat was held on by an 
elastic band, which, being put behind 
her ears and under her chin, was cut- 
ting her cruelly. I knew by experience 
that if the band were placed in front of 
her ears the tension would be lessened ; 



110 PAINTEQ WINDOWS 

SO, with the most benevolent intentions 
in the world, I inserted my fingers be- 
tween the rubber and her chubby 
cheeks, drew it out with nervous but 
friendly fingers, somehow let go of it, 
and snap across her two red cheeks and 
her pretty pug nose went the lacerat- 
ing elastic, leaving a welt behind it ! 

''What do you mean, you bad girl?" 
cried the mother, taking me by the 
shoulders with a sort of grip I had 
never felt before. ' 'I never saw such a 
child — never I'* 

An old woman with a face like a hen 
leaned over the back of the seat. 

''What's she done? What's she 
done?" she demanded. The mother 
told her, as the grandmother comforted 
the hurt baby. 

"Go back to your seat and stay 
there ! ' ' commanded the mother. ' ' See 
you don't come near here again!" 

My lips trembled with the anguish I 



TRAVEL 111 



could hardly restrain. Never had a 
noble soul been more misunderstood. 
Stupid beings ! How dare they ! Yet, 
not to be hked by them — not to be un- 
derstood! That was unendurable. 
Would they listen to the gentle word 
that turneth away wrath? I was in- 
clined to think not. I was fairly pant- 
ing under my load of dismay and de- 
spondency, when a large man with an 
extraordinarily clean appearance sat 
down opposite me. He was a study in 
grey — grey suit, tie, socks, gloves, hat, 
top-coat — yes, and eyes! He leaned 
forward ingratiatingly. 

''What do you think Aunt Ellen sent 
me last week?" he inquired. 

We seemed to be old acquaintances, 
and in my second of perplexity I de- 
cided that it was mere forgetfulness 
that made me unable to recall just 
whom he was talking about. So I only 



112 PAINTED WINDOWS 

said politely : ' * I don 't know, I 'm sure, 
sir. ' ' 

''Why, yes, you do!" lie laughed. 
"Couldn't you guess? What should 
Aunt Ellen send but some of that white 
maple sugar of hers; better than ever, 
too. I've a pound of it along with me, 
and I'd be glad to pry off a few pieces 
if you'd like to eat it. You always 
were so fond of Aunt Ellen's maple 
sugar, you know.'* 

The tone carried conviction. Of 
course I must have been fond of it; 
indeed, upon reflection, I felt that I had 
been. By the time the man was back 
with a parallelogram of the maple 
sugar in his hand, I was convinced that 
he had spoken the truth. 

"Aunt Ellen certainly is a dear," he 
went on. "I run down to see her every 
time I get a chance. Same old rain- 
barrel ! Same old beehives ! Same old 
well-sweep! Wouldn't trade them for 



TRAVEL lis 



any others in the world. I like every- 
thing about the place — like the ^Old 
Man' that grows by the gate; and the 
tomato trellis — nobody else treats to- 
matoes like flowers; and the herb gar- 
den, and the cupboard with the little 
wood-carvings in it that Uncle Ben 
made. You remember Uncle Ben? 
Been a sailor — broke both legs — ^had 
'em cut off — and sat around and carved 
while Aunt Ellen taught school. Happy 
they were — ^no one happier. Brought 
me up, you know. Didn 't have a father 
or mother — just gathered me in. Good 
sort, those. Uncle Ben's gone, but 
Aunt Ellen's a mother to me yet. 
Thinks of me, travelling, travelling, 
lever putting my head down in the same 
bed two nights running; and here and 
there and everywhere she overtakes me 
with little scraps out of home. That's 
Aunt Ellen for you!*' 
As the delicious sugar melted on my 



114 PAINTED WINDOWS 

tongue, the sorrows melted in my soul, 
and I was just about to make some in- 
quiries about Aunt Ellen, whose per- 
sonal qualities seemed to be growing 
clearer and clearer in my mind, when 
my conductor came striding down the 
aisle. 

''Where's my little giril" he de- 
manded heartily. ''Ah, there she is, 
just where I left her, in good company 
and eating maple sugar, as I live." 

"Well, she hain't bin there all the 
time now, I ken tell ye that ! ' ' cried the 
old woman with a face like a hen. 

"Indeed, she ain'tl" the other 
women joined in. "She's a mischief- 
makin' child, that's what she is!" said 
the mother. The little girl was look- 
ing over her grandmother's shoulder, 
and she ran out a very red, serpent- 
like tongue at me. 

"She's a good girl, and almost as 
fond of Aunt Ellen as I am," said the 



TRAVEL 115 



large man, finding my pocket, and put- 
ting a huge piece of maple sugar in it. 

The conductor, meantime, was gath- 
ering my things, and with a ''Come 
along, now! This is where you 
change," he led me from the car. I 
glanced back once, and the hen-faced 
woman shook her withered brown fist 
at me, and the large man waved and 
smiled. The conductor and I ran as 
hard as we could, he carrying my light 
luggage, to a stage that seemed to be 
waiting for us. He shouted some di- 
rections to the driver, deposited me 
within, and ran back to his train. And 
I, alone again, looked about me. 

We were in the heart of a little town, 
and a number of men were standing 
around while the horses took their fill 
at the watering-trough. This accom- 
plished, the driver checked up the 
horses, mounted to his high seat, was 
joined by a heavy young man ; two gen- 



116 PAINTED WINDOWS 

tlemen entered the inside of the coach, 
and we were off. 

One of these gentlemen was very old. 
His silver hair hung on his shoulders ; 
he had a beautiful flowing beard which 
gleamed in the light, the kindest .of 
faces, lit with laughing blue eyes, and 
he leaned forward on his heavy stick 
and seemed to mind the plunging of 
our vehicle. The other man was mid- 
dle-aged, dark, silent-looking, and, I 
decided, rather like a king. We all 
rode in silence for a while, but by and 
by the old man said kindly : 

''Wliere are you going, my child?" 

I told him. 

''And whose daughter are you?'* he 
inquired. I told him that with pride. 
'*I know people all through the state," 
he said, "but I don't seem to remember 
that name." 

"Don't you remember my father, 
gir?" I cried, anxiously, edging up 



TRAVEL 117, 



closer to him. *'Not that great and 
good man! "Why, Abraham Lincoln 
and my father are the greatest men 
that ever lived!'* 

His head nodded strangely, as he 
lifted it and . looked at me with his 
laughing eye. 

**It's a pity I don't know him, that 
being the case," he said gently. *^But, 
anyway, you 're a lucky little girl. ' ' 

"Yes," I sighed, "I am, indeed." 

But my attention was taken by our 
approach to what I recognised as an 
"estate." A great gate with high 
posts, flat on top, met my gaze, and 
through this gateway I could see a drive 
and many beautiful trees. A little boy 
was sitting on top of one of the posts, 
watching us, and I thought I never had 
seen a place better adapted to viewing 
the passing procession. I longed to be 
on the other gatepost, exchanging confi- 
dences across the harmless gulf with 



118 PAINTED WINDOWS 

this nice-looking boy, when, most unex- 
pectedly, the horses began to plunge. 
The next second the air was filled with 
buzzing black objects. 

"Bees!" said the king. It was the 
first word he had spoken, and a true 
word it was. Swarming bees had set- 
tled in the road, and we had driven un- 
aware into the midst of them. The 
horses were distracted, and made blind- 
ly for the gate, though they seemed 
much more likely to run into the posts 
than to get through the gate, I thought. 
The boy seemed to think this, too, for 
he shot backward, turned a somersault 
in the air, and disappeared from view. 

"God bless me!" said the king. 

The heavy young man on the front 
seat jumped from his place and began 
beating away the bees and holding the 
horses by the bridles, and in a few min- 
utes we were on our way. The horses 
had been badly stung, and the heavy 



TRAVEL 119 



young man looked rather bumpy. As 
for us, the king had shut the stage door 
at the first approach of trouble, and 
we were unharmed. 

After this, we all felt quite well ac- 
quainted, and the old gentleman told me 
some wonderful stories about going 
about among the Indians and about the 
men in the lumber camps and the set- 
tlers on the lake islands. Afterward I 
learned that he was a bishop, and a 
brave and holy man whom it was a 
great honour to meet, but, at the time, 
I only thought of how kind he was to 
pare apples for me and to tell me tales. 
The king seldom spoke more than one 
word at a time, but he was kind, too, in 
his way. Once he said, ** Sleepy?" to 
me. And, again, "Hungry?" He 
didn't look out at the landscape at all, 
and neither did the bishop. But I ran 
from one side to the other, and the last 
of the journey I was taken up between 



120 PAINTED WINDOWS 

the driver and the heavy man on the 
high seat. 

Presently we were in a little town 
with cottages almost hidden among the 
trees. A blue stream ran through 
green fields, and the water dashed over 
a dam. I could hear the song of the 
mill and the ripping of the boards. 

* 'We're here!" said the driver. 

The heavy man lifted me down, and 
my young uncle came running out with 
his arms open to receive me. ''What a 
traveller ! " he said, kissing me. 

"It's been a tremendously long and 
interesting journey," I said. 

"Yes," he answered. "Ten miles 
by rail and ten by stage. I suppose 
you 've had a great many adventures ! ' ' 

"Oh, yes!" I cried, and ached to tell 
them, but feared this was not the place. 
I saw my uncle respectfully helping the 
bishop to alight, and heard him inquir- 
ing for his health, and the bishop an- 



TRAVEL 121 



swering in liis kind, deep voice, and 
saying I was indeed a good traveller 
and saw all there was to see — and a lit- 
tle more. The king shook hands with 
me, and this time said two words: 
"Good luck." Uncle had no idea who 
he was — ^no one had seen him before. 
Uncle didn't quite like his looks. But 
I did. He was uncommon ; he was dif- 
ferent. I thought of all those people in 
the train who had been so alike. And 
then I remembered what unexpected 
differences thev had shown, and turned 
to smile at my uncle. 

"I should say I have had adven- 
tures!" I cried. 

**We'll get home to your aunt," he 
said, **and then we'll hear all about 
them." 

We crossed a bridge above the roar- 
ing mill-race, went up a lane, and en- 
tered Arcadia. That was the way it 
seemed to me. It was really a cottage 



122 PAINTED WINDOWS 

above a stream, where youth and love 
dwelt, and honour and hospitality, and 
the little house was to be exchanged for 
a greater one where — though youth de- 
parted — love and honour and hospital- 
ity were still to dwell. 

''Travel's a great thing," said my 
uncle, as he helped me off with my 
jacket. 

''Yes," I answered, solemnly, "it is 
a great privilege to see the world. ' ' 

I still am of that opinion. I have 
seen some odd bits of it, and I cannot 
understand why it is that other jour- 
neys have not quite come up to that 
first one, when I heard of Aunt Ellen, 
and saw the boy turn the surprised 
somersault, and was welcomed by two 
lovers in a little Arcadia. 



